The Minsk summit has shown that the policy of ignoring and boycotting Russia promoted by Ukrainian authorities is ineffective and harmful, holds the State Duma’s foreign relations chief.

MP Aleksey Pushkov who chairs the State Duma Committee for
International Relations has told ITAR-TASS that the meeting
between Russian President Vladimir Putin and Ukrainian leader
Petro Poroshenko demonstrated that the line chosen by the
government in Kiev in early summer was not up to their
expectations.

“Stopping the negotiations with Russia on natural gas and
blocking a reasonable agreement in this sphere as well as
attempts of total confrontation with Russia on all international
panels simply do not work. The meeting with Minsk demonstrated
that the boycott of Russia and attempts to create such a Ukraine
that would have no business at all with Russia were absolutely
unfeasible,” Pushkov noted in the interview.

He emphasized that the clear anti-Russian line was mainly
promoted by Ukrainian PM Arseny Yatsenyuk.

“I think that the Ukrainian leaders must thank Yatsenyuk for
the problems they currently have. It was Yatsenyuk who had
undermined the gas talks and everything shows that this move had
been agreed with the US administration. Now Poroshenko starts
suggesting we resume of the gas talks.”

“Yatsenyuk has promoted the idea of severing all trade
relations with Russia and claimed that Ukraine could survive it,
and now Poroshenko says in Minsk that Ukraine would not benefit
from the trade conflict,” Pushkov noted.

The MP added that the looming change in Ukraine’s policies was,
in his view, the main result of the Minsk summit.

The Russian and Ukrainian presidents met in the Belarusian
capital on Tuesday in the course of a Eurasian Customs Union
summit, which also includes the Ukrainian president and
representatives of the European Commission.

Apart from participating in multi-party talks that touched upon
Ukraine’s possible future association with the EU, Putin and
Poroshenko held a bilateral meeting dedicated to the current
military conflict in eastern Ukraine, discussing ways to end it
quickly and peacefully.

Russia will do everything to facilitate a peace process in
Ukraine, President Putin told the press following the two-hour
talks with Poroshenko, which he described as positive.However,
Putin emphasized that Russia could not set forth conditions for
settling an internal conflict in Ukraine, and thus the sides were
not discussing a ceasefire agreement.